Aged only 27, Jack Delosa has already amassed a $25 million fortune from teaching budding entrepreneurs how to succeed in business.

Delosa, who is spending this coming week with Sir
Richard Branson
on Necker Island, heads private business education company The Entourage, which has more than 60,000 online members around the world.

He is one of four new entries on the BRW Young Rich list from the education sector, one of the fastest-growing industries on the list that has enjoyed a big explosion in wealth this year.

Though only 27, he insists he is ­capable of teaching those lessons after packing in plenty of business ­experience in his still fledging career.

“I think the biggest challenges for anyone starting out in business is ­probably that there is no road map and we often go into business far more ­optimistic and naive than what we will be in a couple of years," he told the Nine Network’s Financial Review Sunday.

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At the age of 18, Delosa dropped out of a commerce law degree and ­borrowed $20,000 to launch a ­business-to-business call centre.

It was “a disaster," says Delosa, but he recovered and in 2006 ­co-founded MBE Education, which taught small businesses how to raise capital and then exit their business for as high a price as possible.

Not surprisingly, he is a big supporter of Generation Y. He says ­traditional business education is failing budding entrepreneurs, who are flocking to newer institutions such as his.

“Young entrepreneurs are a rising tide globally. My generation is fed up with the old way of doing things and what is being taught in universities and so on," he says.

“They see people like [Facebook co-founder]
Mark Zuckerberg
going out there at an early age and being successful. So they want to know the lessons that don’t get offered in degrees, from people who have been successful."

The Entourage, established in 2010, is designed to be a school for entrepreneurs under 40. Though the 60,000 online members have joined for free, a further 600 students pay fees to attend Mr Delosa’s “Scalable & Saleable ­program", which counts current and former Young Rich List members such as Ruslan Kogan and Clair Jennifer as guest speakers.

The program says it teaches ­strategies to develop businesses as fast as possible and make them attractive to sell should the owner want to do so. “We get business owners that aspire for more or aspiring business owners," says Delosa. “About 30 per cent of attendees are not yet in business, but want to be."

He says attendees have added nearly $150 million in total to the value of their enterprises in the past four years and have raised $30 million in venture capital in that time.

“We’ve had a lot of success stories. We have people go from $20,000 sales each month to $200,000. “There was the cupcake store that went from one store to four, and plenty of others."

Next for Delosa is a possible ­overseas expansion and a diploma of business, adding to his business guide, Unprofessional, which was published this year.

As for critics who might claim Delosa does not have the necessary experience to teach the next generation of business owners, his retort is that there are plenty of big names behind him.

“We’re an education institution, as opposed to a seminar company," he said. “We’ve got big companies that have partnered with us like Google,
ANZ
and
Commonwealth Bank
and speakers like Ruslan Kogan and ­[Atlassian co-founder] Scott Farquhar. They have a high level of integrity."

The BRW Young Rich list is published on Friday online at www.brw.com.au and in print inside AFR Magazine.